Duryea went into the bathroom, ran an electric razor quickly over his face, took two aspirin tablets, and was combing his hair when he heard the unmistakable sound of a heavy spoon beating against the bottom of a frying pan.
He hurried out through the kitchen to find Wiggins standing in the door, grinning. Milred was holding his arm. “Please don’t do it any more, Gramps.”
“Why not? What’s the matter?”
“The neighbors might not like it.”
“Why not?”
“Well, it’s — you see, Frank has a position to maintain.”
Gramps Wiggins surveyed the district attorney of Santa Delbarra County. “Shucks,” he said, “come on in, son, and sit.”
Duryea entered the trailer.
It showed unmistakably that it was purely a masculine contraption, but it was scrupulously clean. The interior had been arranged with great efficiency and gave evidence of unusual mechanical ability on the part of its designer. Every inch of space was utilized to advantage. A gasoline stove was hissing a blue flame under a battered teakettle. On the table were three cups, three plates containing bacon, scrambled eggs, and buttered toast. Wiggins poured clear, golden-brown coffee from a tin coffee pot. “Milred tells me you’re feelin’ kinda low.”
The district attorney nodded.
Wiggins swooped down under the table, jerked open a closet door, came up with a bottle, and poured a generous portion into Duryea’s coffee cup, dumped a similar load into his own, and looked inquiringly at Milred.
“What is it?” Duryea asked suspiciously.
“Fix you right up,” Wiggins said. “Put it in coffee, it makes you feel good right away. How about it, Milred.”
She made a gesture of surrender. “Go to it, Gramps.”
He poured some in her cup, shoved the cork back in the bottle, and dove down out of sight. During the interval while he was storing the bottle, Milred leaned over and sniffed the concoction in the coffee cup, then she looked up at her husband and rolled her eyes.
Wiggins popped up into view. “All right, folks, let’s go! Food’s gettin’ cold. Sit down and dig in. Don’t stand on formality. Drink your coffee first. It’ll warm you up.”
Duryea tried his coffee. The smell of rich brandy mingling with the coffee odor soothed his nostrils. He tasted the concoction, said to Wiggins with sudden respect in his voice, “Say, what is that stuff?”
“Best brandy on earth,” Gramps said. “A friend o’ mine mails it to me. Got a vineyard up in Northern California. I’m on my way to see him. This is old, old stuff. Keeps it just for his friends.”
Duryea took a deep swig of the coffee, picked up a wooden-handled fork, and tentatively tried the eggs. An expression of pleased surprise came over his face. He raised a piece of toast and conveyed a large forkful of eggs to his mouth.
“Told you he’d like it,” Wiggins said to Milred, then to Duryea, “That’s my own private recipe for scrambled eggs.”
Duryea said, “Don’t think I’m a dissipated hulk, Gramps, just because I’ve got the shakes this morning. My stomach’s been looping the loop. You see, I was called out early this morning...”
Milred coughed.
Duryea stopped, thinking over what he had said. That cough was certainly a warning signal, but it couldn’t have been because of anything he had said. He wondered if it was be-cause of something he had done.
Grandfather Wiggins was waiting, with his head tilted slightly on one side as though to hear better. “Yep,” he said, “you was called out this morning. What was it?”
“A very gruesome double murder,” Duryea explained. “The bodies were...”
“A murder!” Gramps Wiggins shrilled.
Duryea nodded.
“Gee gosh!” Wiggins exclaimed, then turned reproachfully to Milred. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
She looked across at her husband. “Why, I didn’t — I just didn’t think of it.”
“Didn’t think of it! Me droppin’ right in on a murder case, a real, honest-to-goodness murder case, an’ you not thinkin’ about it! Gee gosh!”
Milred explained belatedly, “Gramps is a mystery addict.”
“I’ll say I’m a mystery addict,” Gramps Wiggins said. He stepped back from the table, swung open the doors of a locker, showed shelves packed with books, and magazines. “Here you are. Best mystery stories published during the last ten years, and clippings from the True Detective magazines about crimes I happen to know somethin’ about. Makes it interestin’. Read about a crime in a paper, then after a while, an article will come out in one of these True Detective magazines. I clip it out an’ fasten ’em all together. Lots o’ times I’ll sit up nights with newspaper accounts of a crime, tryin’ to work out a solution. You’d be s’prised how often I hit it, too. Well, well, so we’ve got a murder, have we?”
“Two murders,” Duryea said, somewhat lamely, fully conscious of the implications of the plural pronoun.
“Well, now,” Gramps Wiggins announced, “I guess Milred’s marryin’ a district attorney ain’t goin’ to be so bad after all. I’m stayin’ right here an’ helpin’ you solve ’em, son. You can count on me.”
“Thanks,” Duryea said dryly, “but I won’t need to bother you, Gramps. I have the sheriff, you see.”
“Sheriff!” the old man exclaimed. “Sheriff! Sheriff, hell! You’ve got me!”
Milred looked across at her husband. “Drink your coffee, dear,” she said, “and then let Gramps fill your cup again. You’ll probably need it.”
Chapter 4
Ted Shale’s suitcase yielded a pair of slacks and a sport shirt. He donned these. The coat of his single-breasted business suit had not been in the water, and he put it on.
His wet trousers, shirt, tie, and underwear he immersed in a bathtub filled with lukewarm water, manipulating the garments until the salty water had been rinsed from them. Then he drained the bathtub and hung the garments out to dry above the tub. The monotonous drip-drip-drip which fell on the porcelain furnished a mournful cadence which kept pace with his thoughts. The sales manager of the Freelander Pasteboard Products Company would hardly approve of having his salesman marooned in a Santa Delbarra hotel.
The telephone rang.
Ted picked up the receiver. A feminine voice said, “Mr. Shale?”
“Yes.”
“Dressed to receive visitors?”
“Who is this?”
“Miss Moline.”
“How about you?”
“Thanks to borrowed plumage, I’m all fixed up. As it happens, Miss Harpler and I seem to have identical measurements.”
“Where are you?”
“At the yacht club. I presume your hotel would object to feminine callers in your room, but I know a nice cocktail lounge. You looked awfully cold when I last saw you. I’d like to get something that would counteract the effects of that chill. After all, you know, you saved my life and...”
“Yes, yes, go on,” Ted interrupted, laughing.
“Suppose I drive by in about ten minutes?”
“I’ll be waiting at the curb,” Ted promised.
“Be seeing you,” she said and hung up.
Ted slipped on his coat once more, adjusted the collar of his sport shirt, gave himself a somewhat dubious glance in the mirror, combed back his hair, and went down to the lobby.
Ted had made no explanations when he had entered the hotel in his wet clothes, and the clerk looked at him curiously. “Everything all right, Mr. Shale?”
“Quite.”
“I thought perhaps you had... that is...”
“No, I hadn’t.” Ted smiled and walked on past the clerk to loiter around the entrance of the hotel, watching the cars that purred past. At that, he nearly missed her. He had hardly been prepared for the cream-colored sport coupe which slid out of the traffic lane and paused for a moment, its motor whispering a song of controlled power — a whisper which could quite evidently become a deep-throated roar of speed.